Destiny: Going Rogue
by Dcoop7400
Summary: Two Guardians attempt what many call a suicide mission and yet they're both crazy enough to do it. Going behind the Speaker's back, they undertake a mission which will cost them more than either of them could ever imagine.
1. Destiny: Going Rogue Ch 1

The Beginning

It all began with the Collapse, but, you already know that story, so I won't waste my time with that. Besides, that's for the Speaker to tell you, not me. Mr. High And Mighty sitting up in the Tower saying nothing unless it's to say you're a fool, but that's beside the point. I'm not one for arguing and shouting so I'll leave the Silent Speaker alone and get to what I actually want to say. It's a story, or a legend, or a bedtime story, or whatever you want to call it; I'll just stick to calling it "The day I left the Light". Well, I guess you could say "we" but, we'll get to that later. Actually, I've think that I should shut up and get on with what I'm trying to say. And so it begins…I guess.

So, one day, my Exo buddy and I were planning something that could very well get us killed and was borderline insanity. However, being Hunters, the rest of the Tower and Guardians already thought we were insane, so no big deal doing this. However, there was a problem, and it was what we were doing. We had already talked to the Speaker (worst conversation ever) and Cayde-6 and even Eris (most disturbing conversation ever) and all of them basically said "You're crazy!" or "No one will go!" and "You will be consumed by the Darkness." Blah, blah, blah. We've heard all those warnings before, right before we went into the Vault. And look, I get a new weapon, and my friends got amazing gear as well, stuff we couldn't have been able to get without going into the Vault of Glass. Anyways, back to what I was saying before. So we asked the other Vanguards, a few others from the Tower, we even asked our Ghosts. Nothing. So we waited, and asked, then waited some more, then asked again. Finally we got tired of waiting and decided to take it upon ourselves to move forward with our plan. Our stupid, crazy, insane, suicidal plan that would change our lives, forever. We were going to go and kill Crota.

See? Not…completely... okay, okay, never mind. I get it. It may be a little crazy but it was still _somewhat_ doable. Now, before I get into the whole minutia of the plan, I guess it's only right that I give some form of background on the two psychos who had a death wish. First off, we're both Exos, robots, cyborgs, whatever. Second, we're friends. Actually, switch those. We being friends is more important than being Exos. Anyways, now that we've got the race thing out, I guess names are in order. I'm Zed-17 and my psycho friend is Axel-7, but we usually stick to Z and Ax. Short, simple and quick.

We met while patrolling the sulfur ridden pools of Venus. I still hate him for it, too. The story of how we met goes something like this unless this memory has been wiped too. I'm trying to complete some bounties so I can collect for the week and this Exo shows up and takes out the Fallen Captain I'd been hunting all along the Ishtar Cliffs. Sadly, protocol dictates that no Guardians are allowed to fight outside of Lord Shaxx's Crucible, so I couldn't kill him even if I tried. Well, that and his Ghost. Oh well. I shouted at him for taking the target using some "colorful" language and some interesting gestures, but he shrugged it off and turned around to summon his Sparrow like he was going to leave. Now I have a thing, some would call it a hidden talent, others would call it a glitch. Whatever it is, it makes it nearly impossible for me to miss a shot when I'm mad. Now he had his Sparrow and was getting ready to take off. Now, as far as I knew, there was no protocol for destroying another Guardian's Sparrow, so after one good shot from my sniper, he wasn't going anywhere. It was funny actually, because instead of stalling like a Sparrow normally does, his exploded. It exploded! Ha! Serves him right for what he did. I walk over to him, not to see if he is okay but to see if anything dropped off of him. I wasn't looking for Glimmer since all that stuff is encoded to the person who has it, but instead I was looking for those Strange Coins that had become more and more popular. As I get closer, sniper aimed at his head just in case, he kicks my legs out from under me, grabs my rifle, and points a hand cannon at my face. By that point I was angry enough to spit nails. If it wasn't for the weapon aimed at my face, I'd whip out my Golden Gun and burn him. Well, the weapon and the regulations. Man I hate the Speaker. But instead of pulling the trigger and putting a nice sized dent into my brand new Celestial Nighthawk, he holsters his weapon, offers me a hand up, gives me my rifle back and just, leaves. No words, no sign, nothing. It was weird but I had the rest of Venus to comb for some relics or whatever for Dead Orbit and Cayde.

Once I got back to the Tower, before I went to go try to clean my armor of all the sulfur and Fallen blood and that Vex…whatever, I went over to turn in my bounties for the week, hoping the Glimmer rewards would cover expenses until next week's bounties rotate. As I'm walking over to the bounty handler, I see, _him_. That same Exo from Venus. I walk up behind him and wait to see if he notices and what bounties he's turning in. Lo and behold, he's turning in the same bounty I was. The one he stole from me! I was winding up a right cross when I noticed that it was actually _my_ bounty. He was turning in the bounty I picked up. Apparently someone in the Tower granted him access to my bounties. And once he turned it in, the Glimmer reward went into my account. He turns in the rest of his bounties and then turns around and just nods. I nod back.

After that day, a legendary duo was formed. Many adventures lay in store for us. Both dark and light, easy and difficult, but nothing we went through or encountered or killed or won could prepare us for one of the darkest days of our lives. Nothing could prepare us for the day we left the Light.


	2. Destiny: Going Rogue Ch 2

The Day

So now we get to the Day. Oh the dreaded day which haunts my memory systems. Wish I knew how the memory wiping system worked. Oh well. Just another scar to live with….

Anyways, I guess I better at least provide some explanation for what happened on that day. Well, here it is, to the best of my memory.

Three years ago, my friend, Ax and I had been patrolling Venus looking for a Vex gate in the area. This was after the whole bounty dispute by the way. Anyway, we're looking for this Vex gate which was said to be somewhere near the Endless Steps. We drop down into a pool of that glorious smelling orange sulfur water that seems to appear just where you don't want it to on Venus. Ax was laughing his head off while the only thing I could think of was "And there goes my entire week's earnings of Glimmer. Another week spent cleaning and without repairs." Ax didn't have to worry about that. Mr. I'm-Backed-By-Iron-Banner-So-I'm-Rich. Sometimes it pays to have the words "breathe in and out" written on the back of my gauntlets. Once Ax is done laughing and I'm done skulking we continue on. "Z, seriously, look into a partnership with Saladin or one of the factions or someone dude. You can't keep going on 900 Glimmer a week." That's Ax for you, always trying to convince me of something. "Ax, for the thousandth time, I'm no good in the Crucible. I patrol and turn in bounties, that's it. You know that. 900 Glimmer is enough for me. It pays for repairs, coolant, and in this case, armor cleaning." I wasn't rich and I didn't make a lot but, eh, I got by. After some more back and forth we get close. Our Ghost's scanners start picking up an anomaly. "Z, we're closing in. You got enough ammo?" That same question every time we made our rounds. "Yes I have enough ammo…can I get two clips? I'll pay you back later. STOP laughing!" Okay so what if I didn't have enough ammo? Sue me! But that single question was what changed the whole day. "Yeah, sure dude. And don't worry about repay-"A loud crack, a flash of light, and a scream of pain beyond anything I've heard. That was it. That was all it was. All I remember. Everything that came after seemed like a dream. It would've remained that way too if I hadn't remembered I was an Exo. Once all my sensory systems kicked back in, the sight in front of me was nothing less than ghastly. Ax, lying there, half his head blown away. A Fallen Captain was walking toward us. My "glitch" kicked in. The Captain wasn't going anywhere again. The noise of the gunshot from my rifle attracted a lot of attention. Vex started walking towards me and my friend. I started counting. I had twenty bullets. There were double that many Vex. "One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six…." I counted until I heard a click, then I kept counting until that was the only noise. Once I was sure no one else was coming, I went back to check on Ax. What was left of his face seemed to be running low level life support systems just to keep his body from leaking coolant. I knew the Tower's protocol for a severely damaged Exo: scrap. I wasn't taking my friend back to be scrapped. I knew how to repair an Exo. I've done it enough times for myself. I needed parts. That's all. Any parts. And here we were surrounded by dead Vex. I got to work.

 _ **POV of Ax from his recovery on Earth**_

I'm awake. Um, awake? Was I asleep or, what? Okay so I'm awake. Wait, where am I? I was on Venus with…oh CRAP! Z! I was with him and now he's not here, wherever here is. Okay, that's weird, my right eye, it's not…there. Running system and subsystem checks and nothing. A repair bandage for Exos? For severely damaged Exos. Wait, am I going in to be scrapped? Is that what happened on Venus? Wait, what was that? Someone is here. "Ax? You awake?" Was that Z? "Hey. You. Can you stand?" It _was_ Z. Thank the Light. "If you can, get off my couch and start moving. Your coolant has been sitting still for too long. I'll explain the bandage later so DON'T touch it." Yep. Z. "Um…where am I?" "You, my friend, are back on Earth. And you are in my apartment in the lower city. And you are currently still sitting on my couch. Move." Well that was a relief. At least Z was alive and fine. Still didn't answer my question about my eye but it did bring up another question: why was Z living here? All guardians lived in the Tower… "Hey Z, why is it that you—". And he cuts me off. Of course. "Why is it that I don't live in the Tower with all the other Guardians? It's because yours truly said a few things to a certain someone and that someone had me evicted from the Tower. I'm only allowed to dock my ship there and go there to talk to Cayde or turn in bounties, etc. So, I live here. And that's why I live on 900 Glimmer. The other 2100 goes into this." Woah. Okay so Z had it rough. I got up and started walking around. It was weird. The more I moved, the more the right side of my face felt like it was coming back. Maybe he was right about the coolant. Z's place was covered with spare parts and armor pieces and…a Vex eye core?! "Z! Right now tell me what happened on Venus or I will break you!" if he did what I think he did… "Okay. The right side of your face got blown off. I killed the thing that did it along with 40 or so Vex. You were near death. I took apart some Vex to rebuild the right side of your face. Now you can take the bandage off." "What—".

 _ **After Ax passes out; from Z's POV**_

"Good, now he'll shut up." It was funny really. The whole ordeal. At least how I remember it. Plus I did him a favor, and he got his revenge later on. Dang, it still hasn't healed. I'll get to that later. Back to what I was talking about. I fixed Ax. Well, I fixed him the best I could in the field given the time and supplies I had. Sure it goes against all the rules and every protocol concerning the programming and maintenance of Exos but it was either that or watch my friend be turned into weapon parts. So what if I took apart a couple Vex and integrated his systems with theirs? No big deal right? Besides, he hadn't gone mad or teleported anywhere since I integrated the systems and he still hasn't to this day. Anyway, I'll let this matter be. I'll move on to what further pushed Ax and I away from the Light. Ax had to finish recovery and I had to go have a talk with some people about killing a really big…thing that for some reason glowed green and had a sword. He had a sword, we had guns. How hard could this be?

 **I've never been so wrong…**

I told my Ghost to watch over Ax and continue integration of the Vex systems into his. I left to go to the Tower. I was already late for the meeting that I had called so not off to a good start. I showed up in the Vanguard's Hall and there is Ikora, Zavala, and Cayde all sitting around the center table. I had also called in Eris Morn for the some extra insight, and then, at the head of the table was the idiot himself, the Speaker. I walked in and stood there waiting for someone to say something. "If my opinion counts for anything, as this Guardian's Vanguard, I believe he could do this. He has skill and he has proven his worth in the field." That's Cayde, backing up his Hunters. "Well, when talking about a matter such as this, Cayde, your personal opinion does NOT matter, so thank you for your input but from now on, keep your bias to yourself." And the Speaker. That was enough for me to have another outburst.

Several hours later, I walked out of that Hall with a good dent on the right side of my head and no green light from the head honchos of the Tower. Only thing I learned and gained from that meeting was a deeper hate for the Speaker and that Zavala is a Defender. Titan's hit like a Cabal Phalanx. As I'm walking out I hear the Speaker call me. I stopped, desperately trying not to shout. He walked up with Zavala shadowing him. "I know how you feel on this Guardian. I can feel the anger and resentment you feel towards me for my decision, but you must understand why I said what I said. Eris is living proof of why you can't embark upon a mission such as this. I can sense your drive to go despite my warnings. If you are to ignore all my other warnings, heed this one alone, if you go on this mission, you will be responsible for your fire team, you will be unaided in your endeavors and you will be banished from the Tower and the city and you will be relieved of your Ghosts. Farewell Guardian."

Okay, that was the most ominous thing that I've heard from the Speaker in my 6 years as a Guardian. I didn't pay any attention to his ramblings at the time, granted they would have saved me a lot of time and spared me PTSD nightmares. After I left the Tower, I went back to my place. Ax was up and walking around again but once he saw me, he looked like he wanted to kill me. That's when I noticed the bandage on his eye was removed. Apparently Ghost's work faster than me when it comes to repairing Exos. The system integration for his new eye went better than expected. I later found out that it may have gone too well. The Vex eye core I had installed as a replacement was working and actually blended in pretty well. I could go into the whole tech mumbo jumbo about all the parts and pieces I used then to fix his eye but I'll save you the trouble of hearing me go on about stuff that makes no sense. The only problem I could see was how one side of his face looked more metallic than the other. Once he decided to speak to me again, I sat down and told him of my meeting with the Tower heads and Mr. Fortune Teller's "warning". He actually agreed with some of what was said but when I threatened to knock him out and disassemble his eye again, he change his mind. I still think he hates me for actually doing what I did. Still, I put him in charge of getting four more psychos together. We were going to the Moon.

 _ **The story has now caught up with Z and Ax**_

Well here we are. We fought. We killed. And yet here we are, just me and Ax, at the edge of the Hellmouth, Ax barely alive and me with two missing fingers and coolant leaking somewhere underneath my armor. "Ax? Ax can you speak?" I'm sitting here hoping beyond hope that some way, somehow Ax isn't dead and my friends are alive down in those tunnels. Well, since Ax can't speak, looks like I'm going into those tunnels again. On my own. I'll move Ax to a cave or someplace safe and just reroute his power so that it all goes into life support. Time to go pay those Hive a visit and bring my friends back….

I…I can't. No words can describe what I have witnessed. The pain I've endured, the things I've seen in those tunnels. I'm with Ax. He's alive, but barely. We're all that's left of our six man fire team. What I saw in those tunnels and crypts was enough to freeze the Sun. My friends, gone. All their Light. Even their Ghosts were devoured. I witnessed the Wizards dissecting the Light from my friends and giving their husks to the Thralls. I slammed a clip into my auto rifle and charged headlong into the mosh pit of Hive.

Now here I am, out of ammo, energy, and hope. I was able to kill the Wizards but not before one of those Void blades that those Acolytes fire sliced right through the metal casing and wires on my left shoulder, completely severing it. They took my friends and now my arm. That's why I took an arm from an Acolyte. I'll get back to you in this. Systems going into shutdown.

It's been what, 3? 4 months since the Moon? Ax and I are back on Venus. We're hiding out in one of the old university buildings that the Fallen nor Vex have seem to have found yet. Ax has been going in and out of consciousness for a while now. Meanwhile I've been trying to figure out how to integrate organics into machines. I've been working with one arm for months and while I've stopped the coolant leaks, I would still like to have both my arms back. Whatever the Hive are made out of, it's not in the data banks of organic material that I've, uh, "borrowed" from the Tower. I've been at it for months now, day in and day out, but the only thing I've learned is that Hive bone structures are completely random an without any order. None of my systems will "willingly" integrate with the Acolyte arm. Every time I get close to attaching it, it's like my whole body rejects it. Hmm…I've got it! It's the Light! I'm powered and kept alive by the Light, just like every other Guardian. But, then why didn't Ax's systems reject the Vex tech? Maybe it had to do with him being a machine and my brilliant mind dissecting the Minotaur's second eye that allowed it to integrate. I don't know. I'll have to ask him how the eye has been doing since I put it in; but if that's the case with the Light rejecting the Darkness of the Hive, then, that means…I've got to leave it. Leave it all behind. I've got to leave the Light.

And it's not just me that's got to leave the Light. Ax will too. We're both banished from the Tower with the deaths of four Guardians on our, or more likely _my,_ hands. I can't think of any other Guardian who's had to do something like this. The more I thought about it, the more nervous I got. Leaving the Light was borderline insane. Well then, it's a good thing that Ax and I are past the point of insanity.

 **IT'S BEEN A MONTH SINCE WE LEFT**. I was right. That was the key, leaving the Light. Once I had left it both physically and mentally, the arm pretty much automatically attached itself to me. It's weird. Not just the arm, but being without the Light as well. I feel…free, in a sense. Like the Light was holding me back. I've seen the universe in new ways and discovered new powers. Enough with that though. The arm. I thought having a Hive arm attached to me was going to look weird but once my core processor fully integrated the new appendage into my other systems, the arm just turned into some sort of white metal. I found out the hard way that it was bullet proof and I think it has some pull with the Darkness. I'll explain later. Right now I'm worried about Ax. It was around the time I got the arm working, that he sat up off his cot and started what sounded like crying. I walked over to him to see if he was alright and he lunged at me and pinned me to the floor, knocking my hand cannon away from me. The Vex eye starts glowing and he starts speaking in a weird voice. He said "I saw them. I saw them all. You shouldn't have gone. I see more. Do return to the Cliffs!" he passed out again after that and woke up a few hours later saying he had a headache and wondering why I had him tied down. I think I know what has started happening. The Vex eye seems to still hold some connection to the Vex network. I think his eye is allowing him to see through time. It's a guess but I think I'm right. We'll see though, because tomorrow, we're going to the Ishtar Cliffs. And if he has another freak out, I'll have no choice. I'll have to "remove" the eye. Hopefully it doesn't come to that but it's been two weeks since Ax did that and I think he has it under control. He said he still has a headache which is weird considering we're Exos. Oh well. If I can tune out the hallucinations then he can tune out the psychotic fits.


End file.
